Redemption
by Gauss
Summary: Inspired by, but not based upon the events of the episode "Damage" from S5 Angel. Rating for Language and Racist or bigoted comments; Chap 10 added August 5th
1. Freedom

Disclaimer:  I don't own this universe.  That's the sole domain of Mr. Joss Whedon.  But the character I'm building up here is, to the best of my knowledge, mine.  She's rather heavily inspired by the Episode from Angel: "Damage," but as far as I know, Maria is a fairly original character…  At least not one I've seen either in any of the episodes or in fandom so far.

For the record, however, I should mention that to the best of my knowledge, there is nobody named Maria on Virginia's death row; and even if there were, any resemblance to the character here is purely coincidental.  Furthermore, as far as I know, the governor of that state has no friend whose son was beaten to death with a baseball bat.

In other words, none of this actually happened.

Chapter 1:

"It's time, Maria."

Maria did not respond as she sat on the nondescript bench in the holding cell, her head bowed; her long black hair obscuring her face.  Her hands were clasped in front of her, as if in prayer, although she had declined to have a priest see her in her final hours.  The large clock on the wall facing her quietly counted out the seconds, but in the silence of the tiny room, the soft _tick…tick…tick…_ exploded against her eardrums as if someone had detonated a firecracker next to her ear.

"Maria?"

Slowly, almost as if she hadn't heard him, Maria looked up into the warden's face, allowing her eyes to slowly open, then gently, deliberately, she nodded.  She stood smoothly, facing the door.

She'd known that her time was almost up when the doctor had come in to give her a physical.  That was part of the procedure she'd always found a little odd.  The State of Virginia had decided to have her killed, but they wanted to make sure she was healthy first.

Since taking the position of Warden, Christian had never understood the almost eerie level of calm that always seemed to possess the condemned in their last moments.  He was fairly certain that if it were him, it would take a small army to get him into the chamber; but in six years, he'd never seen anyone falter.  One man a few years back had stumbled a little upon seeing the execution gurney, but he had resolved himself and had walked with steely determination from then on.  Protocol required two armed guards to be with the condemned, just in case they had to be carried, kicking and screaming.  In all his time as warden, they'd never been needed.  Executions were always a little hard on everyone.  Guards, prisoners; even those not on death row.  Everybody seemed to be a little on edge when someone was about to be injected.  This one would be one of the more difficult ones.  Sure, she'd committed a horrible crime, but something seemed inherently wrong about killing a twenty-one year old girl; even if the state said it was okay.  Beating the son of a very close friend of the Governor's to death with a baseball bat had a way of reducing your chances of clemency.  It was difficult for her attorney to argue that she'd acted in self-defense when the man performing the autopsy revealed that she'd delivered a minimum of twenty-six blows after the victim's heart had stopped.  It had taken less than two hours for the jury to deliberate and to recommend death by lethal injection.  The judge presiding had found little reason to disagree with their assessment.

State-sanctioned murder, the opponents called it; justice, the victim's family almost invariably called it; but none of them had to be the one who activated the machine.

He slid the door opened and gestured to one of the guards, who stood by his side holding a pair of leg irons.

"You know you don't need those," Maria told him, calmly.

"It's the rules, Maria.  You know that."

Maria rolled her eyes and held her wrists out to the guard.  He made short work of chaining her wrists to her ankles.

"Just so I know, what would you have done if I'd said no, shot me?"

"I don't know.  I've never had anyone say no before."

"Which way?"

The warden took a step back and gestured to a small, nondescript door a few feet away.

If not for the restraint straps on the table in the center of the room, it could almost be mistaken, to the untrained eye, as an operating suite.  Its tile floor and pristine white walls practically reeked of sterility.  A small, stainless steel sink stood in the corner.  The far wall consisted of six thick glass panels which were, for the moment, obscured by a curtain which was drawn across them.  

The machine itself hung opposite the windows, an innocuous-looking device consisting of six large syringes, separated into two groups of three.  Three held harmless saline solutions, the other three held the drugs which would, one after the other, render her unconscious, paralyze her diaphragm, and stop her heart.  Only the executioner knew which was which.  One of the guards would start the flow of saline; the other would start the flow from the lethal cocktails.  Neither one would ever know who had what job.  The logic was similar to that of loading a single rifle in a firing squad with a blank round.  That way, each one of the members of the squad could rationalize that they had not delivered the lethal shot.  From then on, the sequence was automated.  The intravenous lines would be flushed out with saline, then a solution of sodium thiopenthal would be pushed through her veins, rendering her unconscious; the lines were again flushed with saline to prevent the a reaction in the IV line from blocking it, followed by a solution of Pancuronium bromide which would cause respiratory arrest; the lines were again flushed with saline, and a solution of potassium chloride would drive the potassium gradient in her heart well beyond tolerance levels.  Her heart would go into arrhythmia, and ultimately grind to a halt.

It seemed so simple when it was described that way.  Mechanical.  Like turning off a light switch.

"Maria?"

"I'm okay."  She replied to his unasked question, "just… taking it in is all."

The guards were well trained and skilled, but it took almost twenty minutes to restrain her and insert the catheters into the veins in her arms.  They certainly seemed to know what they were doing.  Her arms were held straight out from her body, the claim was that it allowed the blood to flow freely back to the heart and lungs, but Maria was convinced there was some biblical connotation as well.  She'd never actually asked.

The curtain drew aside.  Maria didn't let herself focus on any one of the faces on the other side of the glass.  She didn't want the last thing she saw in this world to be the faces of those who were convinced she was a monster.

It took her a moment to realize that the warden was speaking.  Reading out her death warrant as the law required.  She tuned it out.  She knew what it said.  The state of Virginia wants to kill you, yadda, yadda, yadda.  

"Do you have any final statement you wish to make?"  The warden finished.

Maria shook her head, "not for you.  Let's just get this over with."

"Yeah, see if you can kill her twice for me."  The voice, muffled through the thick glass was that of the father of the man she'd killed.  She found it difficult to blame him for the distain he felt.

The warden made no response, but looked down at Maria, almost apologetically.  Then he turned away and Maria heard the click of the machine humming into action.

It wouldn't be long now.

Maria felt something slam into her.  At first she thought it was the drugs, but this was more painful than she imagined it would be.  It tore through her as if it wanted to consume her.  Burning her up from the inside out.  Her back arched as every muscle in her body tensed and spasmed.  She heard someone screaming.  It took her a moment to realize that it was her.

"What's happening?"  She heard the warden's voice off to her left.  She couldn't see him as her eyes were closed tightly.  Her jaw was clenched so tightly it hurt.  She convulsed on the table, her arms pulling against the restraints with a strength she didn't know she possessed.

"I don't know.  It's just a saline solution.  It shouldn't be…"  She could hear muffled commotion on the other side of the glass to her right.  She could even hear the father's voice in the commotion rising in protest, yelling to the warden to stop the procedure.  Mercy, she supposed, was the mark of a great man.

"Maria, can you hear me?"  That was the warden again.  From the location of his voice, she could tell that he now stood over her.  His hands resting on her chest, trying to calm her.

With a scream of tortured metal, the heavy frame restraining her left arm tore free slamming brutally into the Warden's right cheekbone.  He fell to the tile floor, unconscious long before he hit it.

Maria felt as if her body wasn't her own.  Like it was moving of its own accord.  She rolled to her right, ripping the restraints off her right arm.

_This is a dream.  It has to be.  Nobody has this kind of strength._

She smoothly slid the 14-gauge needles out of her forearms.  Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the two guards leaping into action, their clubs drawn.  They carried no guns.  She rolled her body forward as a club slammed brutally through the space her head had occupied only moments before, and freed her legs.

She could hear the witnesses yelling in shock.  She ignored them, focusing her attention on the two guards.  One of them swung downwards at her head, going directly for a knockout blow.  She spun out of the way, delivering a kick to the center of his abdomen.

How was she doing this?  She'd never taken a martial arts course in her life.

In the moment it took for the guard to recover from the kick he'd received to his solar plexus, she gripped his wrist in her right hand then slammed the palm of her left into his elbow, forcing it to bend in exactly the opposite direction it was designed to.  His hand automatically released the club, dropping it smoothly into her right hand.

The second guard came at her from the side, striking at her right temple.  She smoothly twisted and blocked his blow with her newly-acquired club, and lashed out with a kick at his right kneecap, shattering it.  He fell to his left knee, groaning in pain.  She lashed out, backhanded, bringing the club across his right temple.  He dropped facefirst to the tile floor.

She stood for a moment in the center of the chamber, blood flowing freely from the punctures in her arms.  As if for a moment she couldn't believe that she was standing and they were not.  The doctor who would have had the responsibility of declaring her dead was cowering in the corner of the chamber, and she could hear people pounding on the windows behind her.  More distantly, she could hear an alarm sounding.  She didn't have much time.

Through the door she'd entered through was a series of locked doors and guards.  She'd never make it out that way.  Her body was supposed to be carried out the other way, to a waiting hearse.  That way was relatively unsecured.  Most people coming through there were dead, and relatively unlikely to escape.

The white hearse sat in the courtyard, its engine idling.  The driver sat waiting for the body to be carried out, apparently oblivious to the commotion inside.  Maria stalked up to him and punched through the driver's side window, grabbing the man by the throat.

"Get out."  She said simply.  He did.

It was amazing how easily driving a hearse could get you out of a prison compound.  The guard barely looked at her face as she rolled up to the front gate before he waved her through.  It didn't hurt that it was about the right time for a hearse to be rolling out with the remains of a condemned criminal inside, and in a sense, it did.  The remains were just a little more viable than they were supposed to be.

The hearse rolled away onto the main road, to freedom.

If you could call it that.


	2. A Modest Proposal

_Disclaimer:_ Not mine.  I own nothing.  Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy own everything.

**PLEASE READ THIS DISCLAIMER BEFORE YOU READ THIS CHAPTER:  **I want to make the following absolutely clear before you read this chapter.  While this chapter is rather tame; throughout this story, Maria will often act and speak in a manner which is blatantly racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic.  Anybody who knows me knows that I am none of these.  It is not my intention to seem like I think that prejudice is somehow "cool."  It is, however, my intention to create a character that you, the reader, will hate.  I want this character to offend you.  I want her words to make your blood boil.  The aim of this exercise is to create a character who has all the characteristics that I myself abhor (and hopefully, you do as well), and see if I can turn her into someone to be admired.  If I do my job right, you will want to burn Maria in effigy by the end of the fifth chapter.  If I do it righter, you will love her by the end of the story.  From the outline I've made up, I can already tell that this is going to be a very difficult story to write (and not to put too fine a point on it, I'm not even sure I'm capable of doing it).  Please don't make it more difficult by sending me a review which calls me a racist bigot, 'cause, frankly, it's not true.

**Chapter 2:**

Claudette laced her fingers and stretched her back.  Ugh.  Nothing like a four-hour drive to stiffen your body.  Her three daughters asking "are we there yet?" every ten minutes wasn't helping much either.  Another hour or so, and they'd be home.  And in Québec, the speed limits were basically a suggestion.  She might be able to shave a few minutes off of that time.

The tiny town of Norton, Vermont on highway 114 existed, basically, to be a border crossing.  There was little more than a set of train tracks and a highway into Québec.  The border crossing was a tiny brick building invariably manned by a little frenchman with a thick Québecois accent.  She was, of course, somewhat biased where little frenchmen were concerned.  Her marriage to one had dissolved less than a year after the birth of her third daughter.  The father was some kind of deadbeat whom she'd never heard from since he'd vanished without a trace almost ten years ago.  The twins, Geneviève and Élodie were born first, with Adèle following just over a year later.  The youngest would be eleven in the spring.  Not too bad for a woman just pushing 35.

Even after twelve years, the only way Claudette could think of the twins was by comparing them.  Not because they were so similar, but because they were so different.  They wore their hair differently, they dressed differently, they acted differently.  Even looking at the two of them, it was difficult to tell that they were genetically identical.  Geneviève's long brown hair hung loosely over her shoulders whereas Élodie had hers hacked short just below the ears.  Geneviève was more of an academic where Élodie was the more physical of the two.

Geneviève could see.

Élodie had developed retinitis just under a year after she was born.  The infant had been unable to vocalize her problem and it wasn't until she started running into objects around the house that Claudette had realized that the child's vision was failing.  By then, it was too late.  To this day, Élodie spoke of having seen a bright orange flickering light in front of her.  Claudette could not be certain, but she felt that it was probably the single candle on her first birthday cake.  Élodie had seen no candles since then.

Now twelve, Élodie hadn't let her ailment slow her down.  A studio in Sherbrooke was offering a course in _Karate_, and Élodie had wanted to take it.  Claudette had almost balked at that one, but after meeting with the _Sensei,_ changed her mind.  He'd promised to take good care of her, and had pointed out that eyesight was highly overrated in the martial arts anyway.  Generally, he said, by the time you saw an attack coming, it was already too late.  In fact, he had added, it would almost be an advantage.  Other students needed to be taught to ignore their sight and focus on their other four senses.  Élodie did it naturally.  It seemed that he was right.  If it hadn't been for the fact that she had watched her baby's eyesight slowly deteriorate, she would never have been able to guess it from the way she sparred with the other students.  And, Claudette had to admit, if only to herself, that it took a great effort not to smirk when the other parents watched the little brown-haired girl who had just soundly kicked their child's butt in a sparring session pick up her white cane and tap out a path back to her mother.  Élodie hated being referred to as "handicapped" or "impaired" or "challenged" or whatever the current politically-correct term was.  The only thing with could predictably cause her to lose her temper was giving her some form of special treatment.  She'd nearly punched a kind gentleman who'd offered to help her to her seat at a dinner party a while back.  It was only because her twin sister had expected it and had stopped her that she didn't.  She had, unsurprisingly, flat-out rejected the option of going to a special school for the blind.  She'd taught herself to read and write Braille, and had learned to find her way around the little town of Lennoxville without sight.  She now walked, unescorted, to the Provigo on Queen street for groceries as a matter of routine.  To her, blindness wasn't a handicap; it was simply the only way of life she'd ever known.

Geneviève was the exact opposite of her twin in every observable way.  She much preferred stuffing her nose in a book to practicing _katas_ in the living room.  She tended to worry a little more about how she looked since she turned twelve and started noticing boys.  The appearance of her first zit had been a near traumatic experience for her.  Élodie, by contrast, had barely noticed.  Perhaps one of the few fortunate side-effects to being unable to see was that you worried less about how you looked.  Geneviève would read anything and everything she could get her hands on.  If it had printed text, she would read it from cover to cover.  She had demonstrated this most effectively when, at the age of four, she had memorized the text on a box of breakfast cereal in two languages.  Claudette was fairly certain that she would exhaust the complete collection of Lennoxville's tiny library within the next couple of years.  In spite of their vast differences, Geneviève was very close and fiercely protective of her older-by-twelve-minutes sister, although Élodie would be the first to inform her that she could take care of herself, thank you very much.

Of the three, Adèle was the hardest to pin down.  She was very bright, but you'd never know it if you met her.  There was an awful lot more going on behind those beautiful brown eyes than she let on.  Her mind seemed locked on some distant, unreachable point.  She seemed to look at the world as if none of it were real.  As if it were some kind of a show put on for her benefit.  Her eyes, while not vacant, had a sort of dreamy look to them.  She would withdraw into that little world only she inhabited and the only thing you could do would be to wait until she decided to return from it.  She didn't speak much, and when she did, it almost always consisted of short, cryptic statements that she was usually unwilling to elaborate upon.  She did well in school, although nobody could seem to figure out how.  She didn't seem to read or study at home.  She just naturally seemed to get it.

The gas pump clicked indicating that the tank was full snapping Claudette out of her reverie.  She sighed, realizing that she couldn't put off the next leg of the trip any longer.

She walked into the station and calmly paid the cashier.  One hour from home.  Hard to believe she missed the tiny town.  Her parents, who had moved to Maine for their retirement, had seen her as something of a failure since her marriage had dissolved, leaving her with three kids to take care of.

She slid behind the wheel, twisting the ignition key and turning over the engine.

"Maman?"

That was Élodie's voice.  For the first time that she could remember, the child's voice actually trembled.

She started to twist around in her seat to see what was wrong, when a hand clamped down on the back of her neck.  The vice-like grip, impossibly strong, forced her to look straight forward.

"Don't turn around."  The voice was hard, ragged.  As though its owner had been pushed nearly to the breaking point.

"Je ne parle pas Anglais," she told the voice.

The voice hardened further, if that was possible, "every map and atlas in this van is printed in English.  Try again."

"What do you want from me?"  She tried to keep the fear from showing in her voice.  It was impossible.

"Nothing that you're not going to do anyway.  You're just going to cross the border, exactly as you planned.  After that, once we're nicely out of sight of the border crossing you let me out and you'll never see me again."

"We just crossed the border.  We're going to Maine."

The grip on her neck tightened, "Your gas tank was three-quarters full.  You could have gone hundreds of miles before you refilled.  You're refilling here because it's your last chance to get cheap gas before you cross the border."  The voice lowered to a soft whisper, "that's two strikes.  You don't want to find out what happens when I get to three."

"Why are you doing this?"

The voice carried on, as if Claudette hadn't spoken, "You're going to cross the border, just as you plan to, and if you do _anything_ that even remotely suggests that I'm on board, I swear that the last thing you will ever hear will be each of your daughter's necks breaking."

"You wouldn't."  Claudette stiffened at the threat to her daughters' lives.

"The state of Virginia tried to have me killed less than twenty-four hours ago.  My best-case scenario if they get their hands on me is that they'll succeed this time."  The grip loosened very slightly, "I don't want to hurt you or your three little frogs, but make no mistake, I have absolutely nothing to lose."

Claudette could feel the colour drain from her face, "okay, I'll do whatever you ask, just don't hurt them."

"That's more like it."

As abruptly as the grip clamped down on the back of her neck, it released, and Claudette turned around just to see the back of a young woman making her way to the back of the small minivan.  She sat for a couple of seconds, trying to compose herself.  She hadn't had a good look at the woman's face, but her voice had grim determination to it.  She certainly seemed to believe her threat.

"Okay, girls, I need you all to stay quiet and be calm, okay?"

"Teddy won't find you."  Adèle spoke to the stranger as she pushed past into the back of the minivan.

"Not now, Adèle."  Claudette shook her head.  The one time she really needed her youngest daughter to shut up, and she was being the most vocal of them.  "There's a blanket in the back there," she called to the form which had just disappeared behind the bench seat in the back of the minivan, "put that over you and don't move."

"Don't worry," the voice was spookily calm, "this will all be over in a moment."

_That's what I'm afraid of,_ Claudette didn't voice the thought aloud.

********

The border was, unsurprisingly, manned by a portly little Frenchman.

"Bonjour, madame, je m'appelle Théodore, il faut que je vous demande quelques questions."

"Could you speak English, please?"  Claudette asked politely, forcing her voice to be even.  She spoke fluent French, but she didn't want her new passenger to think she was trying to hide something or signal the guard in some way.

"Certainly, madame."  The man nodded, "my name h'is T'eodore.  H'I 'ave some question to h'ask you."  She never fully understood why those with thick Quebecois accents had the tendency to put the letter 'h' just about everywhere _except_ where they were supposed to be.

"Of course."

"You h'are all Canadien?"

"Yes."  Claudette handed him four individual passports.

"'ow long were you in h'America?"  He asked as he looked over the passports.

"Four days."

"Pleasure trip?"

She nodded, "visiting relatives in Maine."

"Did you buy anyt'ing?"

Claudette shook her head, "food, a couple of tanks of gas.  That's it."

"'ave you seen anyt'ing strange on the road?"

"Strange?"

"A convict h'escape from h'a prison in Virginia.  We t'ink she may be 'eading for the boarder."

"I heard about it on the radio.  Do they think she's headed this way?"

The man shook his head, "Probably not.  T'ere are much closer boarder crossings t'an t'is one."  He shrugged, "still, I 'ave to h'ask."  He handed the passports back to her.

"Of course."

"Where are you 'eaded today?"

"Lennoxville," She replied.

"Ah, h'I live in Nort' 'atley.  We're practically neighbors."

She smiled.  North Hatley was a nice little town on lake Massawippi.  Beautiful little town about a twenty-minute drive out of Lennoxville.

"T'ank you, madame.  'Ave a nice trip."  He waved to the small brick building and the arm which blocked her way lifted.  He waved her along.

Claudette tried not to drive away too fast.

When they were out of sight, she pulled over to the side of the road.  And turned around, "you can come out now, Maria, was it?"

"I didn't say, but that's me."  She could see the young woman clearly now.  She was filthy.  Her hair was knotted and grimy, her clothes hung off of her in tatters.  She had the look of someone who had pushed her body far beyond its limits.

She slowly made her way to the side sliding door and started to open it.

"Wait."  Claudette told her.

"What?"

"Sit down for a second."  She nodded to the empty passenger side front seat.

"You escaped from a maximum security prison."

The woman nodded silently, as she sat down.  As her eyes looked over her, Claudette couldn't help but feel that she was being analyzed as a predator would study its prey.

"Death row."

Maria nodded again.

"What did you do?"

Maria shook her head, "Jeffrey Dahmer kills fifteen people and gets life in prison.  I beat one spic to death with a baseball bat and I get death.  That strike you as fair?"

Claudette bristled at the racial epithet, but held her composure.

"How did you break out?"

"You got me.  They'd just started the machine when I somehow turned into Bruce Lee and beat three guards senseless."

"And how'd you get here?"

"Whoever said that getting there was half the fun never tied themselves to the bottom of a freight train."

Claudette was silent for a moment, "you weren't bluffing, were you?"  She said, "you would have killed us all if I'd told the guard about you."

"I'm dead if I ever go back to Virginia anyway.  Four dead frogs aren't going to make me any deader."

"Where will you go from here?"  Anybody who could move that fast, who was that strong…

"I don't know.  Wherever I can go."

"If I may…"  Opportunities like this didn't come around very often.

"Look, don't push it, lady.  You don't want to know me any better than you already do."

"Maybe I do."

"Fuck this, I'm out of here."  She turned towards the door.

"There's a little town about an hour up the road called Lennoxville.  I live there, and it's the last place anybody would think to look for you."  She nodded up the road.

Maria's hand froze on the door handle.  "So what?"

"Come with me," Claudette wrinkled her nose, "take a shower.  I don't have a lot of space, but the couch is probably more comfortable than your prison bunk."  She smiled, "I have a modest proposal for you."


	3. A Human Being in Agony

Disclaimer:  I still don't own the universe that these characters are inhabiting.  The characters are mine, but the place they're running around it is not.

**Further disclaimer:**  I just want to reiterate: Maria is a racist bigot.  I'm not.  I am creating a character with all the characteristics I myself despise.  The aim of this story is not to give the impression that I believe intolerance is "cool," or to promote hate of people of a certain race or religion.  The use of racist slang and epithets is not intended to give the impression that I actually use them, or approve of their use in polite conversation, merely to probe what I believe to be the greatest single evil in the world today: intolerance.  I think the world would be a much better place if we as a species could accept differences between races, cultures and sexual orientations and accept that there is beauty in every skin tone, every faith and every orientation.  Interestingly enough, part of the reason I took so long updating this was that I got so incredibly pissed off at Maria that I had to stop writing for a while.  I'm still undecided whether it's a good sign or not if you hate the main character of the story you're attempting to write.  I knew this was going to be a difficult story to write when I started…

So, without further ado:

**Chapter 3:**

_Montreal__, Québec_.

"All units, we have a two-eleven in progress at Spence Jeweler's on Berri.  Subject is Caucasian female approximately twenty-two years of age."

"Car number forty-seven en route.  ETA one minute."  Gabbiani spoke calmly into the microphone. They were literally driving down Berri when the call came in and it would take less than a minute for them to arrive, "armed robbery?"

Armed robberies were certainly nothing new in Montreal, like any big city.  What was unusual was to have an armed robbery in broad daylight on one of the most major streets downtown.

"If she's robbing a jeweler's at gunpoint in broad daylight, she can't be that bright."  Daffer, his partner, activated the lights and the siren and pressed the accelerator to the floor, "this shouldn't be too hard."

Armed robbers were, almost without exception, among the dumbest of the criminal element.  Where brains broke down, they used force instead.  A sledgehammer instead of a scalpel, as it were.  When someone exerted more force than they could, the armed robber almost always folded.  Get a couple of cops on scene, a couple of guns on the subject and it was practically a foregone conclusion that this would end with no bloodshed.

It wasn't difficult to spot the scene.  It wasn't even taking place _inside_ the jewler's.  An armored truck was parked in the street, its rear doors hanging open as a swarm of security officers attempted, to no avail, to stop the single woman who danced effortlessly around them.  She was armed with what looked like an extendable baton, and it looked as though she'd already dispatched two of the security officers, Gabbiani's mind immediately analyzed the scene.  So this chick was deadly.  She still couldn't outrun a bullet.

The cruiser had barely skidded to a stop when Gabbiani and Daffer slid lithely out of their seats, each training a nine-millimeter on the young woman.  It was hard to get a good idea of what she looked like.  She had her hair tied up in a bun behind her head, and her eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses.  That and she was moving so fast that her features were little more than blurs as she rendered the security guards unconscious one at a time.  It was a good thing that the dashboard camera in their cruiser was operating, because Gabbiani wasn't sure he could give a description which would distinguish her from any of the other thousands of brunette women living in Montreal.

One of the security officers managed to get a shotgun trained on the subject, for a fraction of a second.  It lasted no longer as she twisted out of the line of fire and in a flurry of motion slapped the barrel of the shotgun downwards as he pulled the trigger.  The solid slug dug a hole a few inches deep in the asphalt after passing through the foot of one of the other rent-a-cops attempting to subdue her.  He fell to the ground blood flowing from a gaping hole in his foot in pulsebeats.  She gripped the barrel firmly and slammed the butt of the shotgun brutally into the bridge of the man's nose.  It didn't have enough force to render him unconscious, but it stunned him enough that he released the shotgun and stumbled backwards.

The woman tossed the shotgun aside, and smoothly stepped around him, gripping him under the chin, then as if the motion required no less morality than snapping a twig, she jerked it brutally upwards.

Even from where he was standing, ten feet away, Gabbiani could hear the loud _crack_ as the man's neck snapped at the third vertebra.  He winced automatically.  Five years on the force and he'd never seen anyone killed.  He'd seen his share of dead bodies, but never had he seen someone get that way right in front of him.  The shock made him (and, apparently, his partner) hesitate for the brief moment it took for the woman to hit the final security officer across the temple with her baton, knocking him out.

"Hold it!"  Gabbiani kept his sights trained on the young woman.  If he shot her now, that would technically be "excessive force," but part of him desperately wanted her to give him an excuse to pull the trigger.

The woman stopped and turned to face the two officers.  She was breathing hard, but not so hard as she should have been as the street around her was littered with the unconscious, the bleeding and the dead that she'd apparently dispatched without so much as a firearm.

"Drop the baton."  That was Daffer.

Maria looked upon them almost quizzically.  The baton in her hand held at the ready.  She was fast, to be sure, but she was in no way fast enough to cross the distance to the police officers before they opened fire.

"Car forty-seven requesting ambulance on scene of a two-eleven at Spence Jewler's."  Gabbiani spoke into the mike on his shoulder.  The officer with a hole in his foot would require medical attention immediately and it didn't look like much could be done about the one whose neck she'd broken, but the others would probably be fine once they woke up and their headaches faded.

In unison, the two officers stood and inched their way towards the young woman.  The baton was still gripped so tightly in her hand that her knuckles were turning white.

"Drop the baton and put your hands behind your head."

Calmly, almost as if bored, the woman opened her hand, allowing the baton to drop unceremoniously to the ground.

Gabbiani held his gun on the woman as Daffer moved around behind her, smoothly holstering his pistol as he prepared to 'cuff her.

Maria studied the cop in front of her for a moment.  _A wop and a nigger.__  Figures.  Do they have a shortage of white cops in this country?_

As she felt the cold metal of the handcuffs bite into her right wrist, Maria exploded in two directions at once.  Her left foot lashed out, coming up under the wop's outstretched hands, knocking his aim off while her elbow lashed out backwards catching the nigger in the bridge of his nose.  She heard a very satisfying crunch as the nasalis bone was crushed under the hard bone of her elbow.  

To his credit, though what must have been incredible pain, not to mention eyes which would be tearing from the impact, he managed to remain composed enough to draw his nine-millimeter from his holster as he stumbled backwards.  Maria spun effortlessly to her left, gripping his hand at the wrist, and pulled the trigger on the nine-millimeter; launching a single slug into the wop's leg. 

The carotid sinus gets its name from the fact that it lies along the carotid artery in the neck.  It is possibly the most vital single nerve in cardiovascular physiology.  It allows the body to control blood pressure with a rapidity which is nearly unparalleled in any physiological system.  As Maria's hand slammed, knifelike, into the nerve, the intricate, well coordinated electrical dance of this little lump of tissue became discordant.  It fired almost randomly, sending impulses in every direction at once.

The man's heart, normally a perfectly synchronized entity began to pulse sporadically, and in a fraction of a second, every artery in his systemic circulatory system dilated.  His blood pressure plummeted from 120/80 to less than 100/50.  Daffer's eyes rolled back into his head, and his legs collapsed under him.  Almost in unison, the two cops fell to the ground, one with a hole in his leg which neatly demarked the caliber of a nine-millimeter bullet, the other unconscious with barely a mark on his body, blood flowing freely from his nose.

The wop was screaming in pain, his hands pressed against the side of his knee as bright crimson blood flowed over his splayed fingers.

Maria walked over to stand over him, looking emotionlessly down at a human being in agony.

"They say that being shot in the kneecap is the most pain a human being can endure without passing out."  Maria shook her head, "being you must really suck right now."  The clip dropped free from the grip of the gun and she tossed it aside.  She smoothly ejected the single bullet from the chamber and dropped the gun a few inches from the guard's hand.  Even if the wop were to stop screaming long enough to grab for the gun, it would be useless.  She didn't consider it all that likely that he would, though.

The last thing Gabbiani heard before blood loss mercifully caused him to lose consciousness was the even tapping of the woman's footsteps on the black asphalt as she walked unhesitatingly away.


	4. Fighting Demons

Disclaimer: Nope, this isn't mine. Well, Maria, I think, is pretty much mine, as are just about all the characters in this chapter. At least, I can't think of any characters similar to them in anything I've read or seen. If there are any similar characters out there, the similarities are purely coincidental, I promise. The universe is the property of Mr. Joss Whedon, I'm just allowing a few of my own characters to run around in it for a little while.

Chapter 4:

"Does the word 'subtlety' mean _anything_ to you?"

"You're welcome. Y'know, considering that I just got enough to pay two of your kids' way through college, you could at least pretend to be grateful."

"A man is _dead_. Six more are in the hospital. Two of those are in critical condition. Does this mean _anything_ to you?"

"Yeah. It means that there are seven people who probably won't be able to identify me any time soon." Maria gestured at the television set as the story played out on the evening news, "you saw the pictures. The shots from the police's dashboard camera look more like Liz Taylor than me. Police have no solid leads even from the guys who have regained consciousness. And uncut diamonds are completely untraceable." Maria's brow furrowed, "You're about fifty thousand dollars richer depending on what uncut diamonds are worth today. You could send two of your kids to university if they decide to go to that place down the street." Maria waved in the direction of Queen street. Roughly in the direction of Bishop's University. "And now I'm supposed to cry over six rent-a-cops in the hospital and a Spic in the morgue?"

"You _killed_ someone. Do you have no conscience at all?"

"Having a whole state decide that it can legally have you put down has a way of blurring the line between righteousness and evil."

Claudette glared at the younger woman, her jaw clenched tightly. Finally she allowed the tension to flow out of her body, visibly relaxing herself. "You got fifty thousand?"

"Yeah." Maria nodded, apparently a little calmer, though Claudette had never been able to shake the feeling that she was like a cobra waiting for the exact right instant to strike.

Spence was one of the few jewelers who actually cut their own diamonds instead of buying them from a third party. They did a good job, too. Claudette's wedding ring had been bought there; although, considering the fate of her marriage, that probably wasn't the best example to use; and she had pawned it a few years back for an admirable sum. Their uncut diamonds were always transported in broad daylight and the time of their arrival was a closely-guarded secret known only to a select few including the police, their insurance broker and the security company in charge of the transport. As administrative assistant to their insurance broker, Claudette only had to memorize the pertinent data from the memos that crossed her desk. And Maria was right. Fifty thousand was a sum that her insurance company wouldn't balk at paying out to a company insured into the tens of millions. Spence's premiums would go up, of course, but the actual increase when compared to their per-annum payments would be tiny. If there were no repeats, the police would chalk this off to a crime of opportunity. A super-strong woman armed with a collapsible baton just happened to be strolling down Berri when an armored truck pulled to a stop in front of her. The idea of a convict escaped from Death Row in Virginia who was helping an administrative assistant to an insurance broker make enough money for her kids to go to college was probably too ridiculous even for most Canadians to believe. And Canadians, as a rule, were used to the ridiculous. This was a country where, for a time, Her Majesty's _Loyal_ Opposition had been a party whose major platform had been the seceding from Canada.

Yes, Canadians were well accustomed to the ridiculous, but even they had their limits.

"You're sure nobody can trace you back to us?" Claudette tried to keep her voice even.

"You heard the news report. Police won't get any usable prints off of the truck. The description they gave is 'Caucasian woman between 20 and 25, black hair, brown eyes.'" Maria smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile. "They've narrowed it down to half the female population of this Godforsaken country. And since nobody knows I'm actually _in_ this country, I won't even be considered a suspect."

Claudette nodded. "From here on, nobody dies, you hear me?"

Claudette never even saw Maria move. And it would be a couple of seconds before her mind completely constructed what had happened. It was as if her body had teleported from the center of the room, and she suddenly found herself pressed against the wall, a vice-like grip around her throat, her feet kicking out a few inches above the floor.

"Now, let's get one thing straight." Maria's voice hissed, venom dripping from every word, "if I wanted to kill you, your children, and every person who stood between me and wherever I wanted to go, do you really think for one instant that you could stop me?"

"Let her go!" Through the red cloud that floated in front of Claudette's eyes, she could hear Élodie's voice as she ran up behind Maria, gripping her free arm and trying to pull her away from her mother. Maria was making no effort to be quiet, and Élodie had no difficulty whatsoever finding the two through the darkness she permanently inhabited.

To Élodie's credit; her reflexes, tuned to respond to the whisper of fabric and the tiny sounds imperceptible to most people which always preceded an attack, guided her hands up to a perfect guard position well before the blow landed.

And against someone who lacked the strength Maria had somehow been blessed with, it may actually have worked. Instead, the strike slammed, its force nearly unabated, into the center of the young girl's chest.

The twelve-year old, weighing in at an astounding eighty-seven pounds, was lifted off the ground as though she barely weighted an ounce. She slammed into the opposite wall, the air rushing out of her lungs as she slid to the floor, collapsing in a heap on the cheap carpeting of the small apartment.

Claudette felt the grip around her neck release and she dropped to the floor, her legs collapsing under her as she instructed her lungs to expand again. Élodie was slowly rolling onto her stomach, trying to pick herself up off the floor. It didn't look like she was hurt, thank God.

Maria looked down at the young girl, crumpled in a fetal position as she groaned in pain and humiliation. Her short brown hair hanging over her eyes as she tried to rise from the floor.

_If I wanted to kill you and your mother, do you think for one instant that you could stop me?_ The voice that she'd forced herself not to hear, the voice that she'd forced from her memory for almost fifteen years drifted again into her mind.

Claudette's gaze drifted from her daughter up to the face of the woman who had assaulted her, and for the first time since she'd met Maria, she saw something other than unthinking anger carved into her face. Something other than murderous rage burning behind her eyes.

It was a look so foreign to the woman's face that it took Claudette a moment to recognize it.

It was horror. Absolute horror. Whatever had just happened, it had her terrified.

And in an instant, it was gone. The same stony, hard face turned back to Claudette, and her voice again spoke with the same loathing it had always had.

"Don't you ever tell me what to do again." Maria spun around, stalking into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Claudette ran over to Élodie, cradling her head in her lap. Geneviève kneeled beside her identical sister.

"God, Élodie, are you okay?"

"'m fine, mom," Élodie's eyes stared sightlessly up at the ceiling, "jus' give me a second."

"Who could do something like this?" Geneviève gently reached forward, brushing her identical sister's hair out of her eyes. "What is _wrong_ with her?"

"She's here to fight demons." Adèle's voice softly drifted over from the sofa where she was seated.

Nobody could argue with the statement.


	5. Pain

_Disclaimer:_  I don't actually own any of this.  The universe is the intellectual property of Mr. Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.  I'm just having a little fun with it in an effort to get them creative juices flowing.

_Author's note:_  This has, by far, been the hardest thing I've ever written, but for reasons I hadn't fully anticipated.  I've spent the last several chapters creating a character who is, in a way, the personification of everything I myself hate.  At several times during the writing of this story, I've had to stop for a few days just because I couldn't stand the character I'd created.  But I've kept going, largely because of the wonderful reviews I've been getting (Fink, you rock).  While it seems weird, somehow, describing this as a labor of love, Maria is a character that I need to see through to completion.

Anyhow, without further ado…

**Chapter 5:**

Nobody seemed to know exactly how long the _Golden Lion_ had stood at the southeast corner of Queen and College.  For all intents and purposes, it had been there forever.

The small microbrewery had been the major dive for just about every student ever to come through Bishop's University.  They served good beer, cheaply and in a province where the drinking age was eighteen.

They had the perfect location, really.  They were a five minute walk from the university campus; a two-minute walk from Little Forks where a sizeable portion of students lived off-campus; and shared their intersection with a nice little Greek restaurant which was opened until two hours after closing time.  They were also right across the street from a Catholic church, just in case you felt guilty after whatever you did while you were in the bar.  She imagined that the students around here had a fair amount to feel guilty about.  Bishop's students had the highest number of sexually-transmitted diseases per capita than any other campus in Canada.

Lennoxville, Québec was quite possibly the only town in North America where the population quadrupled during the school year.  The summer was in full swing now, and the only students still around were the ones who stuck around for the spring and summer semesters.  Consequently, the _Lion_ was relatively unpopulated, even on a Friday night.

As she sat at a table on the _Lion_'s balcony, gently swirling the suds of the half-empty pint in her hand, Maria contemplated the possibility that this may not have been the smartest thing she could have done.  The more often she went out in public, the more likely it was that someone would recognize her.  But after her display in the apartment earlier that afternoon, Maria really needed to get away from Claudette and the kids; and she really, _really_ needed a drink.

As much as she hated to admit it, the tiny town had grown on her.  It was quaint, somehow.  Certainly, some of the more major franchises had worked their way here; a _MacDonald's_ stood next to the Catholic church, and a _Tim Horton's_ had been erected just across Queen; apparently these were both relatively new arrivals.  However, most of the stores along the main drag were privately-owned small operations.  The video store (directly south of the _Lion_) was owned and run by a dumpy little Frenchman.  Maria had only encountered him on a couple of occasions herself, but he seemed friendly enough.  Walking up Belvidère (which became College street as soon as it crossed Queen Street), the road was lined with apartment complexes and convenience stores; or as the Québecois liked to call them, depanneurs or deps.

She glanced over to her right to see two young women gazing into each others eyes across an otherwise empty table.

_That_, on the other hand, was something she wasn't sure she would ever get used to.  What was with all the Goddamned fags in this country?  While their neighbors to the south had been waffling on the issue for years, Canada had gone and made same-sex marriages legal in the political equivalent of overnight.  Frankly, Maria didn't give a shit whether they were gay, straight, or vegisexual; as long as they did whatever they did far, far away from her.

The sun set relatively early in Lennoxville, even in the summer.  By nine o'clock, generally, it was pitch black outside.  But the summer nights were always nice and warm.  The relative lack of street lights gave an unimpeded view of the stars.  She sat back for a moment in her chair, savoring the feel of the cool breeze flowing over her skin.

"Is this seat taken?"

Maria's eyes snapped open at the unexpected intrusion on her thoughts.  A young man in his early twenties stood before her, a mostly-full Molson bottle in his hand.  His blue eyes looked gently into hers from the center of a face neatly framed in short blond hair.  His clothes, while a few years out of fashion; quite a few years out of fashion, in fact; were clean and well-pressed, and they looked quite good on him.

"Look, pal, your chances of scoring with me are zero, look somewhere else."  Maria turned her attention back to the beer in her hand.

"Excuse me?"  He seemed taken aback.

"I can guarantee that there are a lot skankier girls here than me tonight.  Try someone else."

"You think I'm looking for a skank?"

"I think you're looking for what all college guys are looking for in a bar like this on a Friday night: to get laid no questions asked."

"That's a bit of a bleak outlook."  His features softened.

"Tell me I'm wrong."

"You're wrong."

"How did I know you were going to say that?"  Maria took another sip from her beer, "doesn't make me believe you any more."

"Well, I just figured that you're here alone and I'm here alone, so maybe you'd like to join me for a beer.  No pressure, just a beer."

"How do you know I'm here alone?" 

"The empty seat across from you is a bit of a dead giveaway."  He smiled.

"Maybe I'm waiting for a friend."

"In that case, I should definitely stick around."

"Why's that?"

"Just in case she's skankier than you are."

Maria smiled.  It felt good to smile.  "Okay, have a seat."

"Really?  'Cause if your skanky friend isn't showing up soon, then maybe I should…"

"One-time offer."

The man dropped smoothly into the chair across from her.  "Dan McMillan."  He held his hand across the table for her.

"Carol-Anne."  Maria took it.

"There a last name to go with that?"

"That depends on just how charming you are between now and the time I finish this beer."  She held up her half-empty glass.

"How many beers is that?"

"It's my first, why?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm more charming after you've had three or four."

"Trying to get me drunk?"

"I don't know.  Are you any skankier when you're drunk?"  Maria had to admit that he had a rather infectious smile.

She flagged down one of the waitresses, "could we have a pitcher at this table, and two glasses, please?"

They were about halfway through their third pitcher when the barkeep announced last call.  The beer didn't appear to be hitting either of them all that badly.

"So, do you have anywhere you need to be tonight?"  His speech wasn't even slurred, damn him.

"Didn't I tell you that you had no chance of scoring with me tonight?"  Her speech wasn't slurred either.  Did he have them drinking soda pop?  It sure as hell tasted like beer.  And Canadians liked their beer strong.

Come to think of it, she wasn't really feeling anything, in spite of the rather large volume of alcohol she'd consumed.

"Yeah, but like I said, I think I'm much more charming after you've had a few drinks."

"Normally, yeah.  Tonight, I think the barkeep was filling the pitcher with light beer."

"Or maybe you just have an incredible tolerance."

"You've had just as much to drink as I have."

"True, but my male ego won't let me let you out-drink me."

"Fair enough," Maria shrugged, "but if you get alcohol poisoning, I don't know CPR."

"Seriously though," Dan nodded over his shoulder, "My apartment's in Little Forks if you don't have to be anywhere."

"I told you…"

"Not that," Dan waved his hand dismissively, "but I'm starved, and I've got a closet full of bad movies.  What do you say to an order of poutine and mindless entertainment?"

That actually _did_ sound like an okay idea.  It definitely beat whatever she might have to deal with when she got back to Claudette's apartment, anyway.

Maria nodded, "Lead the way."

Lennoxville, as a general rule, is not very well lit at night.  As long as you're on the one main road through town, you have plenty of light, but step away from it and you're immediately plunged into darkness.

"You rent one of these apartments yourself?"

Dan shrugged, "Even a two-bedroom apartment's cheap in this town."  He turned around to face her, his handsome features masked by the darkness, "besides, I kinda like having the place to myself."

"Believe me, I understand that."

"Bad roommate?"

"She's a bit of a nag."

"Always bothering you to clean the bathroom, vacuum the floor, that kind of thing?"

"Something like that."

"Sounds rough."

"So, where is this place of yours?"

"This way."  He grabbed her hand and pulled her gently into a narrow walkway between two apartment complexes.  "Careful."  He helped her climb over a pair of wooden crates that someone had left in the middle of the walkway.

God, Maria had thought it was dark in the street.  Here, she could barely see her hand as she waved it a few inches in front of her face.

"You're sure there isn't a better lit way to your apartment?"  Maria asked, "I mean, don't get me wrong, I find a little darkness as romantic as the next girl but…"

She didn't get to finish her sentence as, with an almost animalistic growl she felt herself slammed against the brick wall to her right, she could feel the man's forearm pressing against her windpipe, making it hard to breathe.  "Looks like we're going to have a little fun after all," he whispered, his face only inches from hers.

She couldn't see him in the pitch blackness to which her eyes had not yet adapted, but she could smell him.  The scent of the alcohol they'd both consumed floated into her nostrils.  Underlying that, she could smell something almost metallic.  Almost like iron.

God, he was strong.

Alcohol.  Sweat.  Blood.

She could feel the panic rising in her.

Alcohol.

_God, he's strong._

Blood.

_God, no.__  Not again._

Sweat.

She could feel it streaking down her face, blurring her vision.

She gripped the arm pinning her against the wall.  It felt cool to the touch.  She kicked out, trying to bring her feet back to the ground, as if her wild thrashings would somehow get him to release her.

_I'm trapped._

She could feel tears forming in her eyes.

_Not again._

_God, somebody help me._

She was panicking, badly.  She could hear her pulse pounding relentlessly in her ears.  Her legs kicked out in vain, trying to loosen his grip through the sheer force of her movements.  Her body spasmed, trying to push itself free from the wall.

_Someone help._

Tears were flowing freely from the corners of her eyes now.

_Someone, please._

She kicked out, and felt her foot connect with something solid.  She wasn't sure what it was, and she didn't really care.  She felt him stumble away from her, and she felt herself drop to the ground.

She was still on her feet, and to her left, she could see the relatively brightly-lit street.  She felt her body pull itself up and run in a blind frenzy towards the light.

"Somebody help me!"  She heard herself screaming, her whole being controlled by an all-consuming panic.

She was only a few steps away now.  She could make it.

She felt something slam into the back of her knees, and she felt a pair of arms wrap around them in a low tackle.  She fell forwards, her body slamming facefirst into the cold concrete.  She felt the air rush out of her lungs.  Only a couple of feet in front of her, she could see the wooden crates they'd climbed over only moments before.  A single plank lay on the ground, just inches beyond her reach.  She could just touch it with the tip of her middle finger, but she couldn't get a grip on it.

She could feel him working his way up her body, his larger weight pinning her to the ground.  She didn't have the leverage to free herself.

In a single motion, she twisted her body, the back of her right fist slamming into his right temple.  Her hand darted out, grabbing the board and swinging it to impact with the bridge of his nose.  She felt herself jump to her feet, her body seemed almost as though it were under someone else's control, and she struck at her attacker in a near berserker state.  She swung the board like a club, slamming it hard into the top of his head.  He stumbled under the force of the blow, but remained standing.

Her hands moved of their own accord, slamming the two by four again into the man's body.  She didn't care how she hit him, or how hard, as long as the end result was something which would be completely unrecognizable as having once been a human being.

God, could he ever take punishment.  He just wouldn't go down.

He stumbled backwards as another blow impacted with his shoulder.  Maria still couldn't make out the details of his face, but his silhouetted body stood ready for another attack.

"Slayer."  He whispered.  His voice floating echoless to her ears.

"What?"

She saw his shape spin around and run for the far end of the walk.

She stood for a good five minutes, feeling the splinters from the board in her hand pushing into her fingertips, as if afraid that he would reappear.

Finally, her hand relaxed and the board fell loudly to the ground.

Then her body sagged to the ground her face falling into her cupped hands.

And she cried uncontrollably.


	6. Darkness

Disclaimer: None of this is mine. It's all the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. The characters are mine, mostly. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen any of these characters anywhere in the universe or in Fandom, so I guess the characters kinda are mine.

* * *

**Chapter 6:**

"Stop." The voice, just barely over a murmur roused Élodie from her sleep in the next room. She and her twin had moved into Adèle's room, freeing up their room for their mysterious houseguest. It was tight, but Élodie was close to her sisters, probably due to the closeness in their ages. She had, surprisingly, not heard Maria enter that night, apparently the woman was being careful not to attract any attention.

"No more." The voice was almost pleading in nature. Not the harsh, brutal sound she'd heard from her earlier this afternoon. She listened intently for any signs that her sisters on either side of her had awoken, but she heard nothing. No change in the tempo of their breathing, no rustling of the covers that suggested they were stirring.

She gently pushed herself to a seated position, allowing her feet to step to the cold floor in the narrow space between her bed and Genevieve's. It had taken her a little while to get the geography of her new room figured out, but now she could make her way around it quite confidently. She gently walked along the edge of her bed, placing her feet carefully as not to make any noise. Her right hand slid smoothly to the foot of the bed. From the bottom left corner, she knew, she had only to stretch both arms out from her body, keeping one hand on her bed, and she could just touch the bedroom door. She rested her fingertips on the wooden surface of the door, using it as a reference point, then stepped forward until she stood a few inches from it.

The door opened silently, and she slid into the living room, feeling the slightly cooler air against her skin. She shivered, suddenly wishing she was wearing more than a flimsy nightgown. That was one of the advantages of sharing a confined space with two other people: it was always nice and warm inside.

_Five paces from here to my room_, her mind dutifully informed her, in spite of the fact that it wasn't her room anymore. She counted off the paces, knowing that she would come to rest centered in front of her ex-bedroom's door. Reaching out, she gripped the cool metal doorknob, softly pushing the door open. She slid gently into the room, closing it behind her.

It was only after the door closed that she realized that she no longer knew how this room was laid out, largely because her right side was now pressed against what felt like a dresser which hadn't been there before. It had been on the opposite side of the room, next to one of their beds. When she and Geenie (Élodie's nickname for her twin) had been in this room, Élodie had practically been able to run around this room full tilt without running into anything. Now she barely knew which direction was up, and her cane was folded under her pillow.

_Great foresight, dumbass,_ Élodie admonished herself.

Maria was still murmuring. Whatever she was going on about, there was a vulnerability in her voice that she'd never shown before. More importantly, for the moment, it gave Élodie a direction to move in. She gently folded her left arm across her chest and stretched her right out in front of her, her fingers splayed as she gently slid her bare right foot along the carpet in the direction of Maria's voice, ensuring the few feet in front of her were devoid of obstacles.

"No more, please. I won't tell anyone."

The toes of Élodie's right foot bumped hard into something and it was only through remarkable self-control that she was able to prevent herself from yelping in pain. Gently crouching down, she felt the object, identifying it as the small chesterfield that had stood about six feet to the left of its current position. A gentle search revealed Maria's form, curled up under a thin blanket.

"Maria, wake up," Élodie hissed, gently shaking the woman out of her slumber.

Under her fingertips, Élodie felt Maria's shoulders tense up as, gripped by whatever terrors danced behind her eyelids, she drove a fist directly at the creature which was attempting to shake her out of them.

Half awake, Maria's blow was clumsy and projected. Élodie could have dodged it with half the time to react that she did. She smoothly snapped her head to the left, gently guiding the fist past her right ear with her left hand. With her right, she drove a punch hard into the cluster of nerves under Maria's armpit, causing the woman to recoil from the blow.

"Who are you? What do you…" Maria's voice was panicked, frantic as she sat up.

"It's me."

There was a moment of silence before Maria spoke again, "you're the blind one, aren't you?"

Élodie frowned, her voice developing a hard edge, "I'm Élodie, and I happen to be blind."

"Jeez, sorry. Didn't know that was a sore point for you."

"And how's our death-row inmate feeling this morning?"

"Okay, I see your point. Down, girl." She heard the young woman flop back on the couch

"You wanna talk about it?" Élodie sat down at Maria's feet.

"What?" Maria's voice became defensive, Élodie could hear her pulling the blanket up tightly under her chin.

"Well, whatever it was that made you try to knock the head off of a 12-year-old blind girl's shoulders." Élodie leaned closer, "and while we're on the subject, how about what made you throw a 12-year-old blind girl across the living room?"

"You don't want to go down this road, kid."

"Maybe not. But when I get bruises, I like to know why I got 'em."

"You can't see anything at all? No bright lights, no motion, nothing?"

Élodie shook her head, "nope."

"How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"Anything. How do you take a shower in the morning? How did you block my punch just now? How do you function?"

"I wasn't given a choice in the matter. I accept that I'll never see a sunrise, or a rainbow, or a cloud. If I ever get married the guy could be a butt-ugly troll and I'll never know about it. I'll never watch a movie, I don't know what's happening on TV. But that's just the way it is. I can't see, and that's never gonna change. So I keep going."

Maria was silent, as if digesting this for a moment. "You're sure you're only twelve?"

"Yeah, why?"

"'cause you sound a lot older than a lot of people I've known."

"Well, death row may not be the best place to look for the gems of society."

"Touché."

"So, you wanna talk about it?"

"Why so eager to hear my problems?"

"I've got eyes that don't work. Might as well see what my ears can do."

Maria was again silent, breathing deeply "You'd better go."

"Avoiding the subject?"

"No, I just don't think your mother would approve of you talking to me."

"I think my mom would approve of my helping someone who needed my help." Élodie smiled. Maria could only just make it out in the darkness of the room. In about five years, the kid would be breaking hearts wide open; that was for sure.

"Let's jut say that we both have to accept something that's never gonna change." Maria told her. Élodie was certain she could hear a note of sadness creeping into the woman's voice, "will that be enough of an explanation for now?"

Élodie nodded, "for now. Someday I'd like to hear the whole story."

"Someday, maybe. It's not a happy story."

"If it were, it wouldn't be so hard for you to tell it." Élodie stood, turning towards the door.

"Élodie," Maria called out.

"Yeah?" Élodie didn't turn around.

"I'm sorry." Maria seemed to be forcing the words out, "about yesterday, I'm sorry."

"Tell you what: someday, you tell me what happened to push you to the point where you'd beat up on a twelve-year old and we'll call it even."

Maria smiled, "deal."


	7. Contact

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the universe. Maria is mine, for the most part, as well as Claudette and her kids. Nobody else is. I don't own the city of Montreal, Quebec, or the town of Lennoxville, Quebec (but wouldn't it be cool if I did?). I'm just having a little bit of fun with this.

* * *

**Chapter 7:**

_Montreal__, Québec_

Skulking around, Maria decided, wasn't exactly her style. Admittedly, she didn't really know what her style was, but after having followed Claudette's instructions to the letter as far as sneaking past the security system that was in place and making her way up to the fourth floor without so much as tripping an alarm, Maria had decided that this definitely wasn't it.

Security guards, police officers… They were something she could fight. They were solid, real. She could get her hands on them and beat them to a pulp. Now, she was sneaking from one camera's blind spot to another, stepping over laser beams… She couldn't fight some guy in some distant room watching a bunch of television monitors.

She gently forced herself to retain her composure. She'd promised Claudette that she'd play it her way this one time, and she wasn't in the habit of breaking promises.

_Room 407, _she could almost hear Claudette's voice telling her exactly where to go. _End of the hall to the right._

Claudette had managed through a little maneuvering, to obtain information on the security of this building, and so far, everything she'd said had been dead on. If she was right again, there was a case of valuable jewelry in the vault connected to 407.

Getting into the room would be the easy part. Getting past the vault door would be a bit more of a challenge. Maria wasn't an electrician by any stretch of the imagination, and she had no clue what the 6-digit combination was. But if Claudette was right, she had all night to figure it out.

Not that that would be long enough if she spent the night guessing. Maria was hardly a mathematical genius, but it was pretty trivial to figure out that there were a million possible combinations, which meant that it would take almost two weeks, even if she didn't spend any time sleeping.

She would just have to jump off that bridge when she got to it.

Now, the door.

She checked the doorknob, knowing that she would find it locked, but it was worth a try. So she rested her hand on the door, just above the doorknob and gently (for her) pressed against it. The doorframe gave with a crunch. In the silence of the hallway, it seemed loud, but nobody was close enough to hear it. There wasn't much point in picking the lock here, even if she knew how. Whoever owned this office would know that it had been broken into when he found the jewels missing anyway. She stepped quietly into the large office, lit only by the city lights shining in from the large window behind the desk. The vault was impossible to miss. It was a massive steel door laid into the wall on her left, with a large keypad not unlike that on a telephone and a small bright screen which demanded that the user enter a combination to open the vault.

_Okay, how do I get past that?_

She didn't know anything about whoever it was that occupied this office, but the warden back at her previous residence had the combination to his office safe written down on a slip of paper in the top drawer of his desk, since he could never remember it.

She shrugged. It was worth checking anyway. It wasn't like the vault was going anywhere in the time it took her to check.

She stalked her way across the thickly-carpeted office and slid behind the large oak desk. The desk drawers were locked, but they opened easily with a generous application of elbow grease. Her gloved fingers gently sifted through the piles of post-it pads, pens and paperclips.

_Nothing,_ she thought to herself, frustrated.

The second drawer revealed nothing more interesting than a grocery list.

"7-9-0-5-0-1"

Maria looked up, startled. She hadn't even heard anyone approach. The woman standing before the desk looked to be in her mid-twenties; a long, dark braid hung over her left shoulder and stretched nearly down to her bare midriff. Her dark eyes looked quiet, penetrating intensity of one who had spent most of her life as an outcast.

It was an intensity Maria had got to know well.

"The combination to the safe. That's what you're looking for, right? It was taped to the bottom of the top drawer." She held up a slip of paper between her fingers which had some numbers scrawled on it.

Maria darted around the desk, prepared to bolt for the door, but the woman only needed to take a couple of steps to the left to stand between her and the door.

"Running out already? But, baby, I just wanna talk a little." She flashed a sultry smile.

Maria stood a few feet in front of the woman, her jaw clenched, her eyes narrow. "I'm only telling you this once," she hissed, "get out of my way." Her muscles tensed. With her strength, she could pound this woman into something closely resembling raspberry preserves; and she would, if it came to that, but she had promised Claudette not to.

"Guess we're not gonna spend much time talking." The woman looked disappointed, "we could cuddle later if that's more your thing."

"I said: Get out of my way." Maria lunged at the woman.

She, for her part, agilely danced out of the way, and simply pressed her hand against the center of Maria's undefended chest.

Maria saw a flash of blue, and felt herself flung across the room to slam into the wall. Every muscle in her body spasmed uncontrollably. It was as if she'd just come in contact with a live electrical wire.

"Oops." The woman held her hand up, tiny bolts of lighting jumping between her splayed fingers, "guess we're having that chat after all."

"What are you?"

"A freak. Same as you." The woman slid a glove over her hand. She walked to her prone body, and squatted next to the incapacitated woman, "and, believe it or not, I'm about the closest thing you have right now to a friend."

"What have you done to me?" None of her limbs seemed to be responding well, or at all, for that matter.

"Don't worry, you'll be fine in a couple of minutes. I just needed you a little helpless for a bit." The woman shook her head, "You're in deep shit, Maria and you need all the help you can get."

_How the hell does she know my name?_ "The police…"

"The police are the least of your problems, girl. They're still combing Virginia for you."

"So…"

"The Watcher's council, Wolfram and Hart, all the creepy-crawlies on the Lennoxville Hellmouth; you really think you could go on a rampage here and not have any of them notice?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

The woman cocked her head, "you really have no clue what this is about, do you?"

"You have about five seconds…"

"Or what, you'll spasm at me?"

Maria's fist swung at the woman's cheek. She wasn't expecting it and it slammed into the side of her face. Maria felt another jolt of electricity, weaker this time, fire through her arm to her shoulder. She got shakily to her feet as the strange woman lay, dazed on the ground.

The woman brought her hand up to her cheek and winced, "damned Slayer healing," she muttered.

_Slayer._ That was what the man that other night had called her.

"Look, tell whoever sent you, and whoever sent that guy last night that I just wanna be left alone." She paused, catching her breath, "and I sure as hell don't need your help."

"You did tonight."

"What?"

"Look over your shoulder," the woman told her.

"What are you talking about?"

"Behind you. In the corner of the room near the ceiling."

Maria turned around, and looked as directed. Even in the dark room, she could see a small plastic box hanging from the ceiling.

"That's a motion detector," the woman answered her unasked question. "This whole floor is wired with 'em. Now, the reason why this room isn't crawling with cops right now is because _I_ shorted them all out."

"If you're expecting a 'thank you…'"

"No, but think about it for a second." The woman pulled herself, with some effort, to her feet, "do you honestly think that the same person who gave you the information that you needed to get this far, who managed to get you to this floor without so much as raising a single red flag somehow didn't know that this floor was rigged with motion sensors?"

Maria was silent, realization creeping over her like a cold fist gripping her heart.

"Sucks, doesn't it?"

"Even if you're right…"

"If I'm right, it seems to me that there's someone who needs talking to far more than me."

Maria looked over at the vault door, than back at the office door behind her.

"You have maybe three minutes before the security guard realizes that he's not getting a signal from the motion sensors on this floor, and there's no way you can clear out the vault and get out of the building in that time."

Maria turned around and ran out the door.

The other intruder stood for a moment in the center of the office, then unfolded a cellular phone from her pocket and dialed a single number.

"Angel? It's Gwen. I've made contact, and she was receptive. I'll keep you informed." She closed the phone and slipped it back in her pocket.

She looked at the vault. Three minutes 'till he realized that he had no signal from the motion sensors on this floor, another four for him to make it up to this floor. And he came up the west stairwell. As long as she exited by the east end of the hallway, she had plenty of time.

She smiled. Well, she _was_ a thief, after all.


	8. Monsters

_Disclaimer:_  I don't own any of this, which kinda sucks because I'd be able to pay off that damned student loan if I did.  I'm not making any money off of this, which also sucks because of the aforementioned student loan.  I don't own the town of Lennoxville, Quebec (which is, incidentally, a real place), or anything, really, in this story.

**Chapter 8:**

_Note to self,_ Claudette admonished herself as she attempted to shake the stars far enough from her field of vision that she could pick herself up off the floor of her apartment's living room, _next time, check the peephole before you open the door._  That was the problem with living in a town where the most serious crime ever committed was jaywalking.  It gave you too much faith in the good nature of your fellow man.

Or fellow woman.

Maria stood over her, her body tensed to strike, her fists clenched as they hung at her sides.  Anger, white hot, radiated from every square inch of her body, oozed from every pore.

"Hi, Claudette," Maria's voice was steady, calm.  Perhaps that was what scared Claudette the most.  She didn't sound angry in the least.  If Claudette hadn't been able to see her face, she would have sworn Maria was discussing a topic no more inflammatory than the weather, "how was your night?"

"Maria?"  Claudette forced her ears to believe what her eyes had already told her to be true.

"C'mon Claudette, I didn't hit you that hard."

That much was true.  If Maria had hit her as hard as Claudette knew she could, she doubted that she'd be alive, much less conscious.

"Care to explain to me why I came home empty-handed tonight?"  Maria's voice didn't so much as waver.

And in a single, terrifying moment, a single thought pushed its way through Claudette's consciousness: _she knows._

On that account, Maria very quickly left no doubt: "You managed to bribe the location of every camera, every electric eye and every security device security device in that building out of whoever you had to bribe them out of, and you somehow forgot that the whole floor was wired with motion detectors?"  Maria stepped slowly into the room, allowing the apartment's metal door to swing shut behind her, "feel free to join the conversation any time now."

"I don't know what you're…"

Maria held up a hand, "I'd think very carefully about finishing that sentence, Claudette.  I warned you once that you wouldn't like what happened if I caught you lying to me again."  Still, she hadn't so much as raised her voice.

"What do you want from me?"  In spite of her efforts to the contrary, Claudette's voice trembled.

"Let's start with 'why'd you do it?'"

Claudette almost laughed, "you terrorize me and my family, you beat up on my daughter, you threaten to kill all of us on a regular basis, and you wonder _why_ I decided to remove you from the equation?"  She pulled herself to her feet, looking Maria evenly in the eyes.

"Yeah, since you brought me _into_ the equation in the first place."

"Before I knew you were a murdering psychopath, I was willing to give you the benefit of doubt."  Claudette's voice hardened, "you make a big deal about the state of Virginia trying to kill you.  Why do I find it hard to believe that you didn't deserve it?"

Claudette didn't even see the strike coming, not that she could have done anything if she had.  It slammed into her left cheekbone, snapping her head hard to the right.  Maria hadn't put enough force behind it to actually knock her out, but it was more than enough to stun her, dropping her undignified to the apartment floor.

"Mom?"  Maria's eyes snapped up to the bedroom door she hadn't even seen open.  Geneviève stood just inside the living room, a shocked look on her face.

"Geenie, stay back."  Claudette's voice was soft, but stern.  "Get back in your room."

Élodie had appeared in the doorway, her right hand resting on the door frame.  She couldn't see the scene before her, but she somehow knew that something wasn't right.  She was forcibly restraining the youngest daughter (Maria couldn't quite remember her name), trying to keep what was already an uncontrollable situation from escalating.

For the briefest of instants, Claudette saw the stone-carved features of Maria's face soften, only slightly.  Maria was not attractive by most people's definition, and Claudette found herself wondering whether that might not be to some degree related to whatever history floated behind her dark eyes.  Maybe if Maria had been shown a little love, a little tenderness in her past, Claudette would see a very different woman standing over her right now.

"Mom!"  Geneviève rushed forward, cradling her mother in her arms.  "What have you done to her!?"  She demanded, her motions frantic, panicked.  She gently ran her fingers along Claudette's cheekbone where Maria's last punch had landed, "you've moved up to beating up defenseless women now?  Blind girls too easy for you?"

"Hey!"  Élodie bristled.

"Not now, Elle," Geneviève turned to snap at her twin.  "Get out," she told the intruder.

"Geenie, maybe we should…"

"Shut up, Elle," Geneviève snapped again, not bothering to look at her sister this time.  "Get out," she repeated, more forcefully this time.

"You're twelve," Maria looked down at the young girl, "you really think you can hold me back?"

"No," Geneviève shook her head, "but just how many cops do you think it'll take to take you down?  How long do you think you can hold out after one 911 call?"  She helped her mother back to her feet, "if I were you, I wouldn't be so eager to find out.

"I think it's time you left," Claudette finally spoke again.

"Walk out, or have the police drag you out.  Make your choice."  Geneviève's features where hard.

"Geenie, I think that maybe…"

"Elle, shut up."

"But…"

"Elle."

Élodie shut up, knowing that there was no way she was going to win this verbal sparring with her sister.

For a long moment, Maria looked as though she was going to try to beat her way through the twelve year old and her mother.  For an instant, Claudette was terrified that they'd pushed her to the point of a rampage.

Then, in an instant, it was over.  Maria spun around, ripped the door opened and stormed out of the building.

Claudette sank into the living room couch.

"God, mom, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Claudette replied, "she didn't hurt me."

"Why'd you send her away!?"  Élodie's voice demanded.

Geneviève gaped, "you're kidding, right?"

"She's not a bad person, she's just… confused."

"Not a bad person?"  Claudette piped up, "she's terrorized this family; she's beaten up half the people in this room, yourself included; and she's killed at least two people that we know of."

"And one of the people she beat up thinks that sending her away isn't the right thing to do," Élodie retorted, "doesn't that earn me any points?"

"No," Claudette replied, "I'm the mother, I make the call."

"Élodie's right."  Adèle's voice was barely audible, even in the quiet of the tiny living room.

"Oh, you wanna weigh in on this, now?"  Geneviève turned to the youngest sister, "fine.  Tell me why we should keep a sociopath around the house."  Geenie's amazing propensity for using big words was matched only by the fact that she actually knew what they meant.

"'cause she needs us," Adèle whispered, "she just doesn't know it yet."

xxxxxx

It was still a couple of hours before sunrise as Maria sat leaning up against the red brick wall behind the depanneur at the corner of Queen and Belvidère.

She'd led a life best described as hellish.  Just over a month ago, she'd walked to what she thought at the time was certain death.  She didn't even waver.  She'd beaten one man to death with a baseball bat to get herself on death row; a week after her failed execution, she'd broken another's neck with her bare hands; and neither one phased her.

So why was she shaking uncontrollably almost an hour after a single verbal lashing from a twelve-year-old?  Why was the distain of one child tearing her apart?

She drew in a tremulous breath, and tried to release it in something resembling a controlled manner.  She failed.  Quite miserably, in fact, and instead found herself sobbing, kneeled in the filthy alleyway.

_If I wanted to kill you and your mother, do you think for one instant that you could stop me?_

_Shut up._

_You just think about what you've done._

_Shut up._

_You're worthless, and you're never going to be any good to anyone._

_Shut up!_

_You're just a stupid little girl.  You think that you can stop me?_

_Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!_

"Slayer."

It took her a moment that the voice hadn't come from one of the demons in her head, and she looked up at the owner of the voice just in time to receive a massive fist generously applied to the bridge of her nose.  She fell backwards, her back slamming into the cold asphalt as blood poured from her nose, running messily down her cheeks and into her hair.  She was pretty sure she heard a loud crunch with the impact.  Her nose felt broken.  She looked up, trying to get a clear view of her assailant.

Assailants, actually.  She could see three of them.

But they weren't…  They were huge.  Gigantic muscular arms arched down from their shoulders, terminating in a pair of enormous fists.  Their sunken eyes glowed red in the darkness, and from the sides of a head best described as colossal grew a pair of long, curving horns.  Bony protruded all over their bodies, and their skin was dark and scarred.

They were…  They weren't human.  They were something else.

That was the last coherent thought that passed through her mind, and a single fist slamming brutally down at her face was the last thing she saw before the darkness pressed in.


	9. Atonement

_Disclaimer:_  I don't own any of this.  Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy do.

_Author's note:_  I've been dragging my heels on the last few chapters, largely because of this chapter and the chapters which are to follow it.  I have been looking forward to this chapter in particular with a sentiment best described as dread.  I have never, thank God, been subjected to any form of physical abuse as described in this chapter.  This is, however, a chapter which I felt had to be included.  I didn't feel that I could properly develop Maria's character without it.  It is also a chapter I had to approach sensitively, and from a point of near-ignorance on the subject matter.  You see my dilemma.  It is therefore with sincerest gratitude that I acknowledge a young woman of outstanding courage and strength of character.  She has lived through a level of physical and mental torment that I don't think I can imagine, or maybe don't want to, and offered to beta-read this chapter (over a number of re-writes) in spite of the fact that I'm sure it opened a number of very deep, very painful wounds for her.  She is a truly remarkable woman, and believe me when I say that I could not have done this without her.

**Chapter 9**

Everything hurt.

That was really the only way to describe it.  It felt as if every limb had been brutally abused and every square inch of her body had been beaten.  Which, in fairness, it probably had.

She lay on her left side, her eyes closed partly out of shame, partly because blinking hurt too much.   Her damp, salty pillow pressed uncomfortably into the side of her face.  Her right arm was bent behind her, her legs tangled.  To the outward observer, the tiny seven-year old looked like a discarded rag-doll.  It felt awkward as hell, but somehow she knew that trying to move into a more comfortable position would hurt more than it was worth.

She gave breathing a try and was immediately rewarded with a stabbing pain through her ribs, followed by an electric jolt of agony through her abdomen as she reflexively coughed in response.

Everything hurt.

You had to hand it to him.  He had abuse down to an art form.  No fists, nothing hard.  Just a pillow case stuffed with a few pairs of jeans to give it weight.  Hit someone with that, and no bruises form on the surface.  They're all deeper, in the muscle.  In the long run, they do more damage, but to the casual observer, there isn't so much as the faintest discoloration to the skin.  No bruising, no broken bones.  She'd never had to fabricate an "I fell down the stairs" excuse simply because nobody had ever asked.

And if she ever said anything to anyone, he would know.  She didn't know how he would know, but he would.  He always seemed to know when she was even thinking of speaking up; and, Lord, could he ever punish her for it.

God, everything hurt.

She gave her lungs another try, this time taking as shallow a breath as she could.  That worked a little better.  Her ribs still ached with the effort, but it wasn't as sharp a pain.

She'd long forgotten whether she'd ever had a life that wasn't clouded either with the pain of the beatings or with the terrified anticipation of them.  It seemed as if her whole life were a whirlwind of agony interspersed with bouts of absolute terror.

_If I wanted to kill you and your mother, do you really think that there's anything you could do to stop me?_

xxxxxx

Maria's eyes snapped opened, and she immediately found herself wondering which reality she preferred; the one that danced behind her eyelids in the twilight minutes just before she regained consciousness, or the one she now found herself in.

She hung a few inches off the ground, her arms stretched over her head, swinging gently back and forth.  She could feel warm blood trickling from the chains around her wrists, down the lengths of her arms, the sides of her body, it poured freely down to her bare toes where it finally dribbled and pooled thickly on the cold concrete underneath her feet.

Her clothes, what little was left of them, hung off of her in strips, and her body trembled, exposed to the biting air.

Her hair was plastered to the side of her face by sweat and caked blood.

She pointedly forced her thoughts away from three topics: what had attacked her, how long she'd been unconscious, and what they could possibly have done to her in that time.  Instead, she took a mental inventory of her body.  Nothing seemed to be missing.  That was actually pretty easy to figure out.  There wasn't a part of her body she couldn't feel.

Everything hurt.

It felt as though both of her shoulders had been dislocated, but she couldn't figure out whether that had happened before they'd hung her up here, or had been the result of one of what had to be dozens of blows she received while restrained.  Either way, her whole body weight was now suspended by her arms, and with every time she gently swung back and forth, it felt as though they were being torn out of their sockets.

She could feel dozens of slashes all over her body.  None particularly deep.  None were meant to kill.  They were all shallow cuts designed to keep her in agony, just barely clinging to life.

They were doing a good job.  Stretching her body out prevented the wounds from healing properly, and judging by the ever-increasing size of the dark puddle beneath her, she'd lost an awful lot of blood.  That explained the weakness, at least.  She wasn't sure exactly how much blood a human being could lose without falling over dead, but she took the fact that she was conscious as a good sign.

She was missing at least two teeth that she hadn't been missing when she lost consciousness; and vision out of her right eye was a little foggy.  She didn't know for sure whether she'd just bled into it, or one of the blows she'd received that night had scratched one of her corneas.  Either way, it would probably heal.  Probably.

All the skin between her right eyebrow and her curve of her lower jaw felt wrong; swollen.  She was pretty sure that it would be an ugly shade of purple, too.  Beyond a constant agony, she couldn't feel much of anything from the waist down. 

_God, what kind of person beats up an unconscious woman?_  Unconscious people were useless.  You couldn't beat information out of them, they didn't even scream in pain when you hurt them, if that was your thing.  It made no sense, even for a sadistic freak.  You couldn't threaten someone who didn't know they were being threatened.  _What makes someone do something like this?_

She knew the answer even as she asked herself the question.

Power.

More accurately, the need to feel like you had power.

They'd attacked her on the street, beaten her unconscious, chained her up and used her as a punching bag (she forced herself not to think about what else they could have used her for in that time); all of this had been targeted at her specifically.  All of this had been done because they needed to feel that they had some power over her.

_And you know just how that feels, don't you?_  A voice in the back of her mind spoke up.

_Shut up.  I'm nothing like…them._

_Really?  Beating a guy to death with a baseball bat, beating up defenseless women, threatening the less powerful, beating up some prison guards, and killing a rent-a-cop because you _can?  _Sounds like you're blurring that line a little, honey._

She knew the voice, but not the words.  It was the same voice that had tormented her, had infected her nightmares for fifteen years.

_Even if you're right, that's your goddamned fault.  You made me who I am today._

_You know, sooner or later, that excuse is gonna stop working._

_It's not an excuse._

_Really?  Then tell me one thing._

_What?_

_Why are you still here?_

_The big, thick chains around my wrists might have something to do with it._

_C'mon, Maria.  With your strength, you could bust out of here easily, and you know it.  Instead, you're hanging here, naked and bleeding, waiting for whoever it was who did this to come back for round two.  Care to explain why?_

Maria didn't have an answer for that one.  She was weak, to be sure, she was hurt and bleeding.  But if she really tried to escape, she knew she could.

_You're here,_ the voice almost seemed to take some joy in the revelation, _because part of you thinks you _deserve_ this._

_That's not true._  Maria even shook her head in emphatic denial.  But her own voice, even in her mind, sounded hollow.  As if she didn't truly believe what she was saying.

_You expected to wake up in Hell a while back, but you managed to cheat your way out of it._  If she could have seen his face, she knew he would be smiling.  _Looks like Hell decided to come to you._

_I don't deserve this._

_Really?  You've got a lot of black marks on that soul of yours, babe.  If anyone deserves this, you do._

_I don't._

_Okay, fine.  Then break your chains and escape._

Maria looked up at the chains around her bleeding wrists, and beyond them, her hands were unnaturally blue as the chains cut off circulation.  Her head dropped to her chest, and tears began flowing freely down her cheeks.

_Welcome to Hell, kid._


	10. Family

_Disclaimer:_  Nope, I don't own any of this.  I'm just enjoying myself a little bit with it.  I hope you are too.  The universe is the property of Mr. Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.  This is a purely creative exercise, and no breach of copyright is intended.

**Chapter 10**

Maria pulled herself from blissful unconsciousness with a cough.  Her body shook at the end of the long chain around her wrists and a near-unbearable wave of agony ripped mercilessly through her body.

She gritted her teeth together and the involuntary cry of pain only escaped as something akin to a grunt.

She couldn't breathe very well, her lungs felt wrong, somehow, although she couldn't fully explain how.  They just didn't want to expand properly.  The dark red puddle beneath her toes had grown significantly, which was really her only way of guessing how long she'd been hanging there.  She found herself wondering how much more blood she could possibly lose.  She'd heard of a lot of people losing far less blood than that and falling over dead.

Then, she'd done a number of pretty incredible things since she'd escaped from Death Row.

She felt colder.  Maybe the sun had gone down.  Her uncovered body was shivering uncontrollably, sending white-hot pulses of pain tearing through her body.

She looked up at her hands.  In the dim light of whatever warehouse they'd dumped her in, they were now a deep purple; almost black; as the minimal blood pressure in the veins in her wrists attempted to force its way past the chains around them.

She couldn't move.  She tried, but her body adamantly refused to respond.  Her arms didn't have her worried much; they were bound.  But her legs, hanging free, wouldn't move either.  She didn't think her back was broken.  She could still fell her legs —God, could she ever feel her legs— she just couldn't get them to move.

_So, is it because you _can't_ move, or because you don't want to?_

_Shut up._

_You break your way out of a maximum security prison, and you can't break out of a warehouse?_

_I'm hurt, I'm weak.  I've lost a lot of blood._

_I don't believe that, and neither do you._

_Go 'way._

_Fine, but bear in mind, whoever did this to you is gonna be back sooner or later; and this time you might not have the good fortune of being unconscious when they get here._

_Leave me alone._

_How?  I'm in your head.  If I'm here, it's 'cause you want me here._

_Yeah, and now I want you to go._

_Make me._

_Fuck off._

There was a brief silence, then; _nope, still here._

_I've done just fine without you for fifteen years, I don't need you now._

_Have you ever really been without me?_

_What?_

_Let's face it, sweetie…_

_You call me that again, and I swear…_

_What?  Threatening a figment of your imagination now?  Get it through your head, cutie-pie, everything I'm doing, part of you wants me to do.  The fact that I'm here is your doing.  That's how much power I've got over you._

_You have no power over me._

_Don't I?_

_What?_

_The single driving motivation in your life has been that you didn't want to turn into me.  Well, guess what, honey; you failed miserably._

_How dare you, you son of a…_

_Rape, abuse, at the end of the day, it's all about power.  Having power over another human being.  Rape isn't about sex, abuse isn't about inflicting pain.  They're both about owning someone; totally dominating them._

_I was _seven_ you God damned son of a…_

_You were seven, and I had power over you.  Now you're twenty-one, and you got a taste of that power yourself, didn't you?_

_Go to Hell._

_Already here, babe.__  You brought me here, remember?_

_This isn't Hell._

_Really?__  If this ain't Hell, then explain to me why you can't leave._

_What are you talking about?_

_Well, just about every religion on Earth has some version of Hell written into it.  Every one of them says that once you're there, you're stuck there.  Everyone always assumes that there's something holding you in.  A wall, a barrier, a three-headed dog…  Maybe it's a lot simpler than that.  Maybe they can't leave because they know they don't deserve to.  Deep down, they know they've earned whatever is happening to them._

_So this is what?  Redemption?_

_Redemption has to be earned, sweetie.  Let that thought ferment for a few hours, since you're not going anywhere._

Then, abruptly, the voice was silent.

xxxxxxxx

"So, we're not going to drink her?  They say that Slayer's blood is pretty intense."  It took her a moment to realize that this was an actual voice; a woman's voice coming from somewhere behind her, although she couldn't turn to see her.  She was fairly certain that she'd blacked out for a while, as she hadn't heard anyone enter.

"It is."  She recognized that voice, a man's, but she wasn't exactly sure from where.  Her brain didn't seem to be working all that well. 

"You've drunk her?"

"Well, look at her, she's bleeding out, and she's not gonna be using any of the blood she's lost anytime soon."

"Why don't we just kill her?"

"The Fyorals want her to die slow after they've taken care of the family that was keeping her."

"So why don't we just eat her and tell 'em that she died from her injuries?"

"Fyorals aren't exactly the brightest of demons out there, but they'll see through that.  You wanna piss off a pack of Fyorals?"

"I see your point," the woman's voice responded, shaken.

"Hey, I'd love to eat her myself, but I can't take on a Fyoral, can you?"

Now she recognized the man's voice.

Crap.

One bad date was going to haunt her forever, wasn't it?

"I know," the woman's voice replied, "but… She's a Slayer.  Supposed to kill our kind.  I'd feel a lot better knowing that she's not gonna be doing any slaying around here."

_"Our kind?"__  What the hell is she talking about?_  Her attention was necessarily divided between her abused body and her keeper's words, so she was only really half-listening to what they were saying, but a lot of what they were saying just didn't make much sense.

"Hey, she's not going anywhere, she's got no strength, no clothes, and she's been beaten within an inch of her life.  She's a Slayer, but I don't think we need to worry."

"Yeah, but they say that there are more of 'em these days.  Thousands, tens of thousands, maybe.  Maybe she's not the only one here."

"Possible, but I don't think so.  Actually, I don't even think that the other Slayers know she's here.  I think we've got ourselves a rogue."

_Slayer._  A lot of people had been using that term to describe her over the last month.  She wasn't exactly sure what it meant.  She had slain, definitely.  She'd killed one man with a baseball bat; that had landed her on death row.  Then she'd killed a security guard with her bare hands.  Maybe slayer was an appropriate term, but it didn't make any sense for them to be using it.

Unless there was some other meaning that she didn't get.

"C'mon, how could you _possibly_ know that?"  The woman's voice replied, angrily.

"She's been here almost a month.  A Slayer has been living in this town; _the_ demon hotspot in Québec, hell, the demon hotspot anywhere east of Alberta, with the possible exception of Moncton; for almost a month.  How many demons has she actually slain?"

_Demons?_ What the fuck was he talking about?

"She gave you a pretty thorough beating with a two by four."

"When she could just as easily have stabbed me in the chest with it."

"She…" the woman's voice paused for a moment, trying to make that last intuitive leap, "she doesn't know what she is."

"Right.  And if she has no clue, then the odds are that the other Slayers don't either."

"So, when are they going after the family?"  The woman asked.

"Midnight."

"How bad'll it be?"

"If they're lucky, the Fyorals will only bring their apartment building down on top of them.  That'll be relatively quick."  He paused for a moment, "If they're feeling more sadistic…"  He left the thought unfinished.

"Damn.  Wish I could be there to see it."  The woman's voice replied.

_Oh God._  They were going after Claudette.  They would kill her, Geneviève…  They'd murder the youngest one, whatever her name was, without a second thought.

Élodie.

They were going to kill Élodie.  The kid was strong, and she had guts; there was no doubt about that; but she couldn't beat them.

She pulled against the chains, but her efforts did little more than make her body lurch, hanging freely.  She ignored every muscle in her body as they screamed in protest in unison.

She pulled again, her body felt like it was on fire.  Like she was burning alive.

"Uh oh.  Looks like our Slayer has a little fight left in her."  That was the man's voice again.

"What say we beat it out of her?"  The woman replied.

"I'm game."  She heard a pair of footsteps gently tapping against the hard concrete behind her.

The man she'd shared a beer with all those lifetimes ago slid into her field of vision, his image drifting drunkenly back and forth as her eyes struggled to focus on him.

"I told you we were gonna have a little fun, Slayer," he whispered, "turns out that it's gonna hurt you a lot more than it does me."

She didn't even see the left haymaker coming at her right cheek, and even if she hadn't been chained up, she doubted that she could have defended herself against it.  Her head snapped hard to the left, her whole body spinning wildly with the force of the blow.

A second blow, directed at her left cheek; she couldn't tell if it was the man hitting her again or the woman this time, as she couldn't tell which direction she was facing; halted her spin.  She had no time to recover from those blows before a hard kick to her abdomen forced the air out of her lungs in a rush, and a primal scream was ripped free of her throat as her body protested the assault.

"They're gonna kill you, Slayer," the man whispered, "and I guarantee you that it's gonna be slow, and it's really gonna hurt."

"What the fuck do you want from me?"  The words gurgled wetly out of Maria's mouth.

"How sad," the man's voice was deadpan, "You're gonna die, and you don't even know what this is all about."  He sighed, "pathetic.  Truly pathetic."

Another right hook slammed across her left cheekbone.

"We can't beat her to death, Davvik, The fyorals want her."

"I know that.  Doesn't mean that we can't have a little fun, though."

"I might have a thing or two to say about that."  A new voice echoed in the vast chamber.

The man in front of her whirled to face the new voice.  Maria couldn't turn her head to see who was talking.

"Who the hell are you?"  The man demanded, the slightest amount of fear creeping into his voice.

"Interesting choice of words, considering the speaker."  The woman circled around in front of Maria, then looked her over, quickly assessing her injuries.  She was about five-four, maybe five-six.  Her dark red hair hung over her left shoulder.  Her features would have been quite attractive had they not been contorted into a nasty grimace as she looked at the deep gashes in Maria's body "see, now you've gone and made me angry; and I hate being angry."

"Who the hell are you?"  The man demanded again.

"You don't know?  Didn't they tell you that Slayers were hunting in packs these days?"

"A Slayer?"

"I _told_ you there were more of 'em, Davvik," the woman's voice admonished her male companion.

"Calm down," he snapped back at her, taking a step toward the new arrival, "if we take her together, there's no way she can beat both of us."

"Smart plan, jackass," the redhead shook her head, "one problem, though."

"And what's that?"

"It ain't gonna work."

The redhead launched herself at the man, catching him off-guard with a hard right hook.  Simultaneously, she lashed out with a perfectly-executed sidekick which caught the woman in the abdomen.  She effortlessly redirected a strike at her ribs and responded with a strike at the man's throat.  He stumbled backwards as she whirled at the woman, slamming her fist into the center of her chest.  The woman stumbled backwards a few steps, a look of shock fixed on her face for an instant before she disintegrated.

Disintegrated?

Maria had the strange feeling that she'd stumbled into some kind of nightmare world.  People didn't disintegrate when they died.  She knew.  She'd killed a couple in her time.

The redheaded woman was, quite literally, dancing circles around the man.  He swung a number of blows at the diminutive woman, none of them landing.  She slammed whatever it was that she held in her hand into the center of the man's chest and he, as the woman had, disintegrated.

The redhead stood for a moment, allowing herself to catch her breath.  She then looked over to Maria, hanging helplessly.

"Jesus, what did they do to you?"  She walked up to her, and with a quick tug, Maria felt herself drop to the ground, her body collapsing as her feet made contact with the cold concrete, he face slamming forward to drop into a cold puddle of her own blood.

"Oh, shit.  Sorry, Maria, is it?"  She kneeled next to the injured woman, and gently brushed her blood-soaked hair away from her face.  "I'm Anne.  You're a tough woman to track down."


End file.
